Pelosi's brutal reality check

Asked this weekend to grade her performance as speaker, Nancy Pelosi gave herself an “A for effort.”

But Pelosi knows that the real test is still to come.

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Pelosi is inarguably one of the strongest speakers in modern history — an authoritarian figure in an era of centralized power in the House. But the coming months are a make-or-break period for her, a brutal reality check of her ability to manage all aspects of her job — consensus-building, agenda-setting, vote-counting, fundraising and campaigning.

Now in her fourth year as speaker and eighth overall as the top Democrat in the House, Pelosi has never faced such a daunting set of challenges:

Health care: Pelosi and other top House Democrats say publicly that they have the votes to push through a comprehensive package, but privately, they know they don’t. Pelosi must balance the diverging interests of her own members while simultaneously satisfying Senate Democrats and working with President Barack Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, a former House colleague with whom she has an uneasy relationship.

The voters: The electoral winds that were at Pelosi’s back in the past two cycles thanks to having George W. Bush in the White House are blowing this year in Democrats’ faces. Prognosticators both inside and outside the party are laying odds on an outcome that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago: a GOP takeover of the House.

Democratic infighting: The factions that make up the House Democratic majority, from the conservative Blue Dog Coalition to the liberal Progressive Caucus, are increasingly willing to fight for their own priorities at the risk of party unity. That dynamic was evident last week when a simple $15 billion jobs bill was punted from the floor schedule over a series of Goldilocks-like objections about too little spending, too much spending and misdirected spending.

Brutal campaigning: Pelosi faces a tough year on the fundraising circuit, with a punishing travel schedule and hard environment in which to raise money. She’s collected $18.5 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — with a goal of $25 million for the election cycle — and $3.6 million for vulnerable Democratic incumbents and challengers. But hints of GOP victory in the fall could to make it more difficult for her to raise money from Corporate America and K Street.

The “bullet in the head” factor: Pelosi insists she will fight for every Democratic seat this November. But as Election Day draws nearer, Pelosi will most likely have to make tough calls on which vulnerable Democratic candidates to help and which ones to cut loose. Those choices would cause conflict in her caucus and could threaten the Democratic majority if she picks poorly.

Internal polls look bad for the Democrats, and Charlie Cook has warned that the party may lose its majority in November.

But in an interview over the weekend, Pelosi said unequivocally that the Democrats will hold on to their majority in November.

“I’m not yielding one grain of sand; we’re fighting for every seat,” the speaker said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Pelosi’s supporters point to her past successes as a sign that she’ll succeed again this year, despite all the obstacles and the gloom and doom.